The best of Material Design apps for Android so far

It's been a good two months since Material Design's grandiose reveal at this year's Google I/O. So far, it's been mostly smooth sailing - the elaborate design language is still fresh, and developers are already catching up to its principles in colorful, pleasant to use apps.

Although Material Design apps are few and far between, the evidence that this style can live on its own outside Google's stock apps is here, and it's quite convincing. We've rounded up some of the best Material Design-styled apps to come so far, and things look promising. Little by little, the Play Store will fill itself with apps that fully complement the visual identity of Android's next major version.

S Converter is a gorgeous unit converter that's dripping with Material Design ink. Some contrast issues with the interface aside, the app converts over 40 units, has a built-in calculator, custom units, combining of units as a single unit, and more.

Utilizing Google’s Material Design principals, Wally is meant to give you a perfectly fluid user flow with subtle animations and bright colors. Using wallbase.cc as the source of wallpapers, you have a set of tools to find just what you’re looking for.

Despite being derived from the same stock android calendar as the majority of alternative calendars on the Play Store, Today sets itself apart from the competition with beautiful aesthetics. The old cluttered grey-on-grey layout was replaced with a clean accented white to create a truly beautiful app. Functionality wise, Today contains all the features you would find in the stock calendar app, with many features getting slightly modified and rebuilt from the ground up to increase performance and productivity.

MindFlux is a fresh take on notes and time management. Free your mind and stay organized. MindFlux is based on techniques like the Getting Things Done® principle or the Kanban technique and makes extensive use of drag-and-drop. Whenever something comes to your mind, quickly move it out by creating a note. Once per day, take a moment to revisit your notes and drag them to where they belong - whether they are tasks, events or just pieces of information. It's fun, and material!

Between is a private and secure way for couples to store and share their memories, providing an exclusive communication channel just between two special people. Features:

- Chat. Fast, secure, and private 1-to-1 chat with specially designed stickers and stamps to help you communicate your feelings better.- Moments. Private photo album allows couples to store and share their intimate moments with each other. Enjoy and remember more of your favorite memories better in a timeline just for two.- Weather Updates. Living together or apart, new weather update feature will bring couples closer together by visually showing the weather they are experiencing.- Shared Calendar. Easy-to-use calendar to plan dates, notify partner about key appointments or travel schedules and to keep track of special days like anniversaries and birthdays.

With this app you will be able to see which files or folders are using most of your storage, know which categories you have the most (images, videos, etc), find duplicates, know which files have been changed and when, search for files, and more. You can also use Unclouded as a regular cloud file explorer.

Unclouded (free)

http://playboard.me/android/apps/com.cgollner.unclouded

image

With Andrognito, you can keep your confidential and important files which you don't want others to access, hidden inside your Android device with its 3-Layer Encryption Engine. All the important files like pictures, videos, documents, apps are securely hidden inside a safe vault which nobody except you with the PIN (or password) can access, thereby giving you complete control over your device's privacy.

S Converter is a gorgeous unit converter that's dripping with Material Design ink. Some contrast issues with the interface aside, the app converts over 40 units, has a built-in calculator, custom units, combining of units as a single unit, and more.

Utilizing Google’s Material Design principals, Wally is meant to give you a perfectly fluid user flow with subtle animations and bright colors. Using wallbase.cc as the source of wallpapers, you have a set of tools to find just what you’re looking for.

Despite being derived from the same stock android calendar as the majority of alternative calendars on the Play Store, Today sets itself apart from the competition with beautiful aesthetics. The old cluttered grey-on-grey layout was replaced with a clean accented white to create a truly beautiful app. Functionality wise, Today contains all the features you would find in the stock calendar app, with many features getting slightly modified and rebuilt from the ground up to increase performance and productivity.

MindFlux is a fresh take on notes and time management. Free your mind and stay organized. MindFlux is based on techniques like the Getting Things Done® principle or the Kanban technique and makes extensive use of drag-and-drop. Whenever something comes to your mind, quickly move it out by creating a note. Once per day, take a moment to revisit your notes and drag them to where they belong - whether they are tasks, events or just pieces of information. It's fun, and material!

Between is a private and secure way for couples to store and share their memories, providing an exclusive communication channel just between two special people. Features:

- Chat. Fast, secure, and private 1-to-1 chat with specially designed stickers and stamps to help you communicate your feelings better.- Moments. Private photo album allows couples to store and share their intimate moments with each other. Enjoy and remember more of your favorite memories better in a timeline just for two.- Weather Updates. Living together or apart, new weather update feature will bring couples closer together by visually showing the weather they are experiencing.- Shared Calendar. Easy-to-use calendar to plan dates, notify partner about key appointments or travel schedules and to keep track of special days like anniversaries and birthdays.

With this app you will be able to see which files or folders are using most of your storage, know which categories you have the most (images, videos, etc), find duplicates, know which files have been changed and when, search for files, and more. You can also use Unclouded as a regular cloud file explorer.

With Andrognito, you can keep your confidential and important files which you don't want others to access, hidden inside your Android device with its 3-Layer Encryption Engine. All the important files like pictures, videos, documents, apps are securely hidden inside a safe vault which nobody except you with the PIN (or password) can access, thereby giving you complete control over your device's privacy.

I've tried Sliding explorer, Android authority recommended it last year. If you want more features, specify it in the user review, the dev will reply you and he's very good at support. Try donating too.

Holo design by Google was already minimal, as well as WP phone was minimal. And most users loved this minimal setup. So I don't think it was bad a year ago. Perhaps iOS users complained about it, missing skeuomorphism when iOS 7 followed the flat trend

Actually I remember it like yesterday.. Yes some iOS users weren't happy about skeumorphism going away, it's true. But the entire design language of new iOS 7 was negatively criticized by Android users, probably the same ones who said iOS never changes... "lazy design due to lack of design" comes to mind as some have put.

But look at it today - and nearly all apps (Android and iOS) are embrasing the flat simplistic design and now it's Android with Material Design, it's flat, it's colorful, and it's flat... And everyone is praising it. Dont get me wrong, I like it, some details even more than iOS, but it feels like iOS is always ridiculed when it's pushing boundaries. first it was a button-less screen, App store, then Siri, then minimalist design then 64-bit, then touch ID, then Car Play... I've heard them all, yet a year later (or 3 years for Google Now) others embrace it and it's "wonderful".

And I'll put iFans on the line too... Quick Toggles (guilty - thought it was redundant), notifications, whatever else comes to your mind. But I specifically made a post regarding the "material design" outlined in this article.

But "iOS 7 followed the flat trend" comment is questionable, since it does not look like Holo (which was primarily a blue accents ontop of dark grey menus without transparencies) and WP which is just tiles on 2D space (it gets points for finding something different). iOS7 is colorful (pun intended) and feels layered in a thee-dimensional space, but primary goal behind iOS7 is to make UI disappear and that was achieved with natural gestures.

Dont get me wrong, I would love to see iOS 7 mixed in with Holo as a dark-theme to iOS7, but I do like navigating within iOS7 more than navigating in any other platform or launchers that I've tried...

Not gloating about how WP inspired this beauty while implying it couldn't be here today without flat looks.
Good grief, he has a lot of developers to remind where this influenced idea came from, maybe that is precisely what he is doing now.
Fastest growing OS and APP style trend ever.

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